


click, boom

by fnowae



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Character Death, Dreams, Heavy Angst, M/M, is this the twilight zone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 17:17:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14958782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fnowae/pseuds/fnowae
Summary: Patrick isn’t upset, is the thing. He used to be. He isn’t now. The world goes on. It always has and it always will.





	click, boom

**Author's Note:**

> no, I don’t know what this is either. 
> 
> no, I don’t know how I came up with it either. 
> 
> but I did just spend a week learning about dreams and look where it got me

_Streetlight. Pavement. Brick wall._

_Hands wrapped up in each other. Bright, bright darkness._

_Nothing at all._

_Click, boom._

“We need to come here more often.”

“Mhm,” Patrick hums lightly in agreement, twirling a ring around his finger and watching as the opal set into it sparkles rainbow in the afternoon light. They’d both agreed diamonds would be too tacky. Too unoriginal. (Too expensive.)

“And maybe next time we don’t leave the actual picnic at home, yeah?” Joe suggests jokingly, hand brushing through the tall grass surrounding them. It’s bluegrass, and Joe had already made a horrid musical pun about it. Patrick had complained he’d been robbed of his rightful chance at a joke. Joe had laughed and kissed his cheek and that just about made up for it all. 

“Mmm,” Patrick agrees again, smiling softly. The sun shines down on them, and the bluegrass and purple flowers and the rolling hills around them. They’d parked a mile away and the crazy thing is Patrick isn’t even apprehensive about the walk back because he knows Joe will be by his side the whole way. He always has been. He always will be. 

///

The alarm is too loud. It always is. Otherwise, Patrick would never leave his bed again. 

He slams the snooze button as hard as he can, and snatches his glasses from their precarious place on the nightstand’s edge. Once they’re on his face, he looks back to the clock. It’s 10:30. What did he set his alarm for, again?

Breakfast is mushy oatmeal, lackluster, because Patrick’s not the one who could always make it right. He absentmindedly spins his ring around his finger as he eats. The spot across from him is perpetually set, always ready, just in case someone else decides to join him. No one ever does. 

(Well, okay, Pete, sometimes, but he can’t sit there. Patrick doesn’t let him. It’s not his.)

The oatmeal sticks a little in Patrick’s throat and for a moment he imagines he might choke. Keel over right here at this table. He views the prospect not with fear, nor with excitement, but rather with distant apathy. 

Patrick isn’t upset, is the thing. He used to be. He isn’t now. The world goes on. It always has and it always will. 

(Click, boom.)

///

_Cold, hard ground. A warm hand._

_Spinning falling everything._

_Click, boom._

“What did I say about ordering seafood at a diner? Who does that?”

Patrick snorts, playing it like he’s embarrassed and eyeing the wall instead of his husband. “I hear they have good cod.”

“What-“ Joe nearly chokes, he’s laughing so hard. “Patrick, this place is called _Minnie’s_ , we’re sitting on vinyl booth seats and there’s a jukebox in the corner. People come here for greasy burgers and a good chocolate shake, not-“ He cocks his head to the side, grinning. “What fish did you even just say?”

“Cod,” Patrick provides, rolling his eyes like he really thinks Joe is wrong. (He doesn’t.) “And I really hear it’s good!”

“Bullshit,” Joe says, “from who?”

“Uh...” Patrick laughs nervously. 

“Say Pete and I’ll never speak to you again,” Joe threatens. “I swear, that man’s taste in food-“

Patrick bursts into laughter. Of course it had been Pete. It always is. Joe starts laughing too and they’re so loud that the waiter looks seriously disturbed when she brings their food over. They quiet down as quick as they can but Patrick’s gut hurts like he can’t breathe. 

The cod is absolutely terrible but Patrick had expected that. They share Joe’s meatloaf. It’s a mild improvement. 

Patrick reaches across the table and grabs Joe’s hand. Joe strokes his thumb across Patrick’s and Patrick decides that there’s no place he’d rather be. 

///

“You can’t do this forever.”

Pete is right like he never was about the cod but Patrick isn’t going to listen. He never does. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” he lies, poking at the pizza Pete brought over for lunch. (Not for lunch, really. It was for talking. Lunch was just a secondary benefit.)

“Yes, you do.” Pete sighs, squeezes his eyes shut. He’s had to become the logical person he never was more than ever lately and it hasn’t even benefitted him. Patrick is too stubborn to listen. Pete waves an arm around the room, gesturing to the dishes piled in the sink, the half eaten macaroni on the counter, the photos deliberately turned around in every corner of the room, the opal ring still set on Patrick’s finger. “This needs to stop. You can’t avoid it forever. You don’t have the time.”

Patrick looks down to the ring, following Pete’s hard gaze. It shimmers in the light, flashing his reflection back onto his face. He looks terrible, pale and sickly and the rings under his eyes stand out so much that even the small gem’s surface shows them well. Patrick could almost believe he’s the one who’s really dead. 

He sighs. “I can,” he says resolutely. “And I do.”

///

_Click, boom._

_Dark and light. Infinite shades of gray._

_Too little time. Too much, too many._

_Too many._

“The stars are beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful,” Patrick responds without a second thought, smirking when Joe chokes like he hadn’t seen it coming. 

“ _Patrick_ -“ he replies plaintively. Patrick actually fucking _giggles_ , damn it. 

“You married me! You chose this! You signed up for it!” he says, chuckling under his breath as Joe groans dramatically. 

“Where do I get a refund?” he asks. 

Patrick giggles again. He never used to do that. Now he always does. There’s a lot of things that he never used to do that now he always does. 

There are a lot of things that he never used to do that now he always does that soon he never will again. 

///

Patrick almost turns one of the photos around, once. Almost reaches for the one over the television that he knows is a wedding photo and flips it over even though he can see it perfectly in his head, but the thing is, he can’t let himself look at a dead man’s face. 

Patrick turns on the news instead, and sees quite a few dead men, but this time it doesn’t matter to him at all. 

///

_Click, boom._

_Loud, bright noise. Pavement rushing up, too fast, too hard. Shaky breathing._

_Nothing at all._

“This is so cliche.”

Patrick rolls his eyes, purposefully rocking the seat because it makes Joe jump then break into laughter. “You’re right,” he agrees, “but I’ve always wanted to ride a Ferris wheel with you.”

“Dumbass,” Joe responds, and they both break into laughter. The world rolls away beneath them, unimportant and unneeded. They are all they have. They are all they need. 

Then the wheel reaches its peak, and descends again, and it feels like the ground is coming too fast, too real, and for the first time Patrick realizes he’s dreaming and the world is falling up to hit him and suddenly he’s the only one on this Ferris wheel and

///

Patrick wakes up in tears. Even when he slips on his glasses, the world is blurry. The milk in his cereal tastes sour but it’s not like it’s an actual health concern so he doesn’t pay it mind. (If it really was dangerous, would he even care?) The world is cold and it’s not just because of the snow floating in the winter wind outside. (Since when is it winter?)

Patrick feels dread bubble up in him like he hasn’t since that night, since everything in his world shattered in the span of one gunshot. ( _Click, boom._ ) He imagines that Pete is here again, staring at him with dark, disappointed eyes, telling him what he knows he needs to hear but will never listen to anyway. 

_You can’t do this forever._

“I can,” Patrick insists to the empty room, as if Pete really is back in it. “I _can_.”

///

_Click, boom._

_A heartbeat too slow to hold on to. A warm hand on a dying cheek. Whispered words into a dying ear._

_It will be okay, it will be okay, until it won’t._

“We need to come here more often.”

Patrick snaps into reality with a jolt. Is it really deja vu if you _know_ you’ve been here before?

“Mhm,” he agrees, even though he’s panicked. This isn’t real, he reminds himself, it can’t be. _He’s dead_.

“And maybe next time we don’t leave the actual picnic at home, yeah?” It feels robotic this time, rehearsed. Patrick can’t do this. He can’t hold on to something that will just inevitably slip away. 

The grass is not blue. It is brown and dead. It is dying and Patrick knows more than anything else that he needs to get out. 

“I’m dreaming,” he says, scrambling to his feet, backing away from Joe as fast as he can because he _can’t can’t can’t_ do this right now. 

“Huh?” Joe’s face changes, confused, concerned, and thank god this isn’t just a straight repeat but it’s still _wrong_. Patrick stumbles back again and sees blood between them. 

“Dear god,” he chokes out, and then he just chokes. 

The sun goes out all at once and they have gone from being everywhere to being nowhere. 

///

“I know,” Patrick says before Pete can even say it. “I can’t keep doing this. So you’ve told me.”

Pete frowns, picking at the pasta Patrick made for dinner. “You never listen.”

Patrick sighs. Bloody grass leaks into his peripheral vision. He shoves spaghetti into his mouth and pretends he can’t see it. “I think I might need to.”

Pete eyes him worriedly. “Are you okay?” _He had wanted this a second ago, hadn’t he?_ Patrick thinks. 

He doesn’t dare reply, though, because he’s afraid that if he opens his mouth the truth might be what comes out. 

///

_Click, boom._

_Red, red blood. Stabbing pain. Too much pressure, crushing in._

_Eternal whispering. It’s trying so hard to help but ‘it’ll be okay’s never worked as a bandaid._

_Neither did love, did it?_

No. 

No, not this one. 

“No,” Patrick repeats aloud, eyes wide. “ _No_.”

“Babe, are you okay?” Joe asks, squeezing Patrick’s hand tight. “We don’t have to go anywhere fancy if you don’t feel like it.”

How can Patrick pretend he’s okay when he’s been avoiding this so long? When he knows how it ends?

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t because whenever he tries to think about it it’s just blood and whispering and nothing at all. Everything after where they are now on the lonely side street is just blank which is why he _can’t_ see it, _can’t_ know. Somehow it seems like things will only feel worse if he does. 

“Love-“

“I’m okay,” Patrick lies, mostly because the dream (memory, but Patrick won’t let himself think of it as one) won’t let him say otherwise. 

“Okay.” Another hand squeeze. An affection ill-deserved. 

Patrick’s stomach twists when Joe proclaims a shortcut through an alley but there’s nothing he can do. He has to live his. He has to see how it ends. _He has to stop hiding from what happened._

Every time he tries to turn back, Pete’s voice echoes again against his thudding heart. 

_You can’t do this forever._

_You can’t do this forever._

_You can’t do this forever._

Deep breath. 

_Click._

Patrick knows what a cocking gun sounds like. It’s paradoxical, he thinks, that he only knows because of the memory of this night, which he is just now reliving. 

Someone demands something. Money, information, does anyone really hear? Patrick doesn’t. He is miles away. Because maybe if he wakes up now, he doesn’t have to see someone die. 

Maybe if he wakes up now, he thinks with a strike of horror, he doesn’t have to see _who_ dies. 

Patrick doesn’t wake up. 

_Click, boom._

Everything freezes, slows until Patrick is moving through syrup, trying to react even though it’s too late, always has been, always will be. 

He sees the bullet in midair and all at once it crashes in on him. It isn’t headed for Joe. 

_Streetlight. Ground. Gray. Noise. Whispering. Blood. Pain._

And all of it, his. 

Click, boom.

///

“You got rid of your pictures.”

Patrick doesn’t pay much attention to Pete. He is not entirely convinced his friend is even real. But this time he nods, trying not to stare at the space where the back of the wedding photo used to be. 

“Why?” Pete sounds genuinely concerned, as if he doesn’t _know_. What else could he have been asking Patrick to stop avoiding? What else is there to avoid?

“You know why,” Patrick says, rapping a finger against the arm of the couch. There is a scar where an opal ring used to be. “If I wanted to see a dead man, I’d just look in the mirror.”

**Author's Note:**

> if you just got absolutely destroyed, try reading it again. i literally told you :)
> 
> anyways! thanks for reading! I really love comments + kudos if you enjoyed!
> 
> xoxo


End file.
